Swiss glaciers show signs of recovery after snowy winter
A group of mountaineers walk roped on the ice of the Swiss Aletsch glacier, the longest glacier in Europe.
Keystone-SDA
Swiss glaciers, heavily impacted by climate change, benefited from heavy snowfalls this winter, marking an improvement on the situation in previous years, according to the head of the Swiss glaciological surveys.
This content was published on
2 minutes
Keystone-SDA
“At the summer solstice, the state of Swiss glaciers is better than in recent years,” Matthias Huss, who heads the Swiss Glaciological Survey Network (Glamos), wrote on the social network X this weekend.
Do you want to read our weekly top stories? Subscribe here.
“But will this be enough for a year with ice gain? Most likely not! But losses will be limited,” he wrote, pointing out that a cool summer could also benefit glaciers.
At the beginning of June, Huss had stressed on X that the weather this year had been a “blessing” for Swiss glaciers.
In a report published at the end of May, Glamos reported well above-average snow cover on glaciers in all regions of Switzerland, with average snow depths of 3 to 6 meters.
According to Glamos surveys of 14 Swiss glaciers, extrapolated to all 1,400 glaciers in the Alpine country, there was around 31% more snow at the end of April than the average for the years 2010 to 2020.
Swiss glaciers melted as much in 2022 and 2023 as between 1960 and 1990, due to extreme weather conditions exacerbated by climate change. After a record loss of 6% in 2022, they melted by a further 4% in 2023.
Adapted from German by DeepL/jdp.
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
Popular Stories
More
Climate adaptation
Why Switzerland is among the ten fastest-warming countries in the world
US delays delivery of Patriot missiles to Switzerland
This content was published on
The US Department of Defense is reprioritising the delivery of the Patriot systems due to the support provided to Ukraine.
Swiss job vacancies fall in second quarter of 2025
This content was published on
After a slight recovery in the jobs market at the start of the year, the number of open positions fell by 3% year-on-year in the second quarter.
This content was published on
Researchers at the Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne have managed to create a robot elephant using a 3D-printable lattice structure.
Common species vital for stability of food webs, study shows
This content was published on
The loss of common flora and fauna can make food webs unstable, with big consequences for entire ecosystems, a Swiss study has shown.
This content was published on
Overall spending on building fell slightly last year, with trends showing more money flowing into renovations than new buildings.
This content was published on
Foreign trade dipped from April to June in terms of exports and imports, with the trend largely driven by the chemicals and pharma sector.
Former Vatican auditor cleared of bribery in Zurich trial
This content was published on
The Zurich District Court acquitted a former financial markets supervisor at the Vatican of charges of corruption and bribery.
This content was published on
The President of the Swiss Conference of Bishops wants a national digital register of clergy – in the interest of transparency.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.